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Show Volume XXX Issue X The Ogden Valley News Page 7 March 1, 2023 The Value of Our Heritage: Classical Western Paideia By Shanna Francis As Americans, we are blessed to be part of a waning culture that influenced for good Western civilization for over 2,000 years; however, it has been successfully under attack for about the last 120. This Western Judeo-Christian culture and civilization is tied to a Greek term called paideia, in essence, the social and cultural rearing, molding, and education of a child that forms the soul—a person’s “affections, thinking, viewpoints, and virtues.” Historically, all of Western Europe and its surrounds, in addition to America, were influenced by a phenomenal paideia that was tied to church, traditional family values, community, industriousness, and a virtuous people, Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin write in their book Battle for the American Mind. In addition to the ability to shape a civilization’s culture, “Paideia has the power to determine who we are and what we become—as individuals, as a community, and as a nation. Until three or four generations ago, our paideia was highly coveted and was cultivated in our homes, schools, and churches.... The concept was embedded in daily life…. Every Western generation from the time of Christ until the late 1800s knew of it.” Our rich cultural heritage, which made America the greatest, wealthiest, freest, and most humane and giving nation in the world, is now purposely and systematically being reprogrammed with an emphasis, instead, on a Godless society of individuals who value, in contrast, personal choice, control of personal identity, being accepted for whatever you believe, creating your own path in life, and, personal gratification, etc. over the value of Christian values based on God, family, and country—not self. It is a healthy and unitifed community composed of family, church, and state that has proven time and again to be what shapes and contributes to healthy, happy, and productive individuals; thus, a healthy, productive society. The same cannot be achieved through the cultivation of a mass of toxic self-absorbed, self-interested citizens. Selfishness has shown to breed self-contempt, depression, addictions, anxiety, and stress. Those in America—and abroad—who wish to overthrow the traditional values of America, who consistently berate our history, harp on the evil of white privilege, criticize representative democracy, and even demonize Christianity, so easily forget or, in remembering, try to sweep it under the rug, the long story of humanity! It was English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who rightly characterized life as “nasty, brutish and short.” Acclaimed clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, in his classic book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, points out that this brutish nature emerges the less disciplined and more self-absorbed humans become. It is highly structured civilizations and their institutions, rife with cultural mores, clear social guidelines, and strict and enforced boundaries outlining right and wrong, that keep humans in check, keeping them from acting out their most depraved and selfish instincts. Peterson writes, “Chimps don’t have much of a super-ego [the part of the brain that keeps our natural, less-desirable impulses in check], and it is prudent to remember that the human capacity for self-control may also be overestimated.” He then points to Iris Chang’s horrific book, The Rape of Nanking’ that describes the brutal decimation of that Chinese city by the invading Japanese. Peterson then points out that the hunter-gatherers of history were much more murderous than their urban, industrialized counterparts and adds other interesting statistics on societal violence. Peterson’s book, published in 2018, notes that the yearly rate of homicide in the modern UK is about 1 per 100,000. “It’s four to five times higher in the U.S., and about ninety times higher in Honduras, which has the highest rate recorded of any modern nation. But the evidence strongly suggests that human beings have become more peaceful, rather than less so, as time has progressed as societies became larger and more organized. The Kung bushmen of Africa… had a yearly murder rate [in the 1950s] of 40 per 100,000…. Yearly rates of 300 per 100,000 have been reported for the Yanomami of Brazil…. The denizens of Papua, New Guinea, kill each other at yearly rates ranging from 140 to 1000 per 100,000. However, the record appears to be held by the Kato, an indigenous people of California, 1450 of whom per 100,000 met a violent death circa 1840.” Peterson goes on to say that even dogs must be socialized if they are to become acceptable members of the pack, even as our children and youth must. “Children are much more complex than dogs. This means that they are much more likely to go completely astray if they are not trained, disciplined, and properly encouraged…. The vital process of socialization prevents much harm and fosters much good. Children must be shaped and informed, or they cannot thrive. This fact is reflected starkly in their behavior: kids are utterly desperate for attention from both peers and adults because such attention, which renders them effective and sophisticated communal players, is vitally necessary.” Thus, the role of family and supporting roles of church, state institutions, and the communities in which they grow and develop, are a necessary part of a healthy socialization processes when each contributes to clear and coordinated direction and guidelines for acceptable behavior that benefit not only self, but the community as a whole. As Peterson adds, “Parents are the arbiters of society. They teach children how to behave so that other people will be able to interact meaningfully and productively with them.” And not just when they are children, but throughout their life. Most philosophers, including Nietzsche, according to Peterson, believe that “The individual must be constrained, [moulded]—even brought close to destruction—by a restrictive, coherent disciplinary structure, before he or she can act freely and competently.” There must be structures in place that are sufficiently restrictive to keep us from doing that which we may not have the self-discipline to do if there were no meaningful consequences. But with the “death of God,” found in much of the Western world, leaving His social mores strewn by the roadside and replaced by utopian, humanist ideas, man has tried to reinvent and establish his own ideals—ideas, Peterson calls “more dead,” as they opened the door to “the great collective horrors of Communism and Fascism.” But sadly, “we cannot invent our own values because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls…. We rebel against our own totalitarianism, as much as that of others…. I cannot merely make myself over in the image constructed by my intellect.” Much more is required, centuries of structured and refined moral formulas that evolved into working codes of behavior, help- ing to ensure the survival and continuation of strong communal societies. This is why violent, extreme revolutions that try to force radical, utopian societal change always fail. Peterson points out that it was the success of Christianity—played out against eons of inhumane tendencies that rewarded the powerful at the expense of the weak—that is the greatest surprise of all human history… not the barbarism that has been mankind’s societal trademark. The story of “Christian” behavior and tendencies are the exception, not the rule in our history. “It is in fact nothing short of a miracle (and we should keep this fact firmly before our eyes) that the hierarchical slavebased societies of our ancestors reorganized themselves, under the sway of an ethical/religious revelation, such that the ownership and absolute domination of another person came to be viewed as wrong…. Christianity made explicit the surprising claim that even the lowliest person had rights, genuine rights—and that sovereign and state were morally charged, at a fundamental level, to recognize those rights. Christianity put forward, explicitly, the even more incomprehensible idea that the act of human ownership degraded the slaver (previously viewed as admirable nobility) as much or even more than the slave. We fail to understand how difficult such an idea is to grasp. We forget that the opposite was selfevident throughout most of human history. We think that it is the desire to enslave and dominate that requires explanation. We have it backwards, yet again…. The society produced by Christianity was far less barbaric than the pagan—even the Roman—ones it replaced. Christian society at least recognized that feeding slaves to ravenous lions for the entertainment of the populace was wrong, even if many barbaric practices still existed. It objected to infanticide, to prostitution, and to the principle that might means right. It insisted that women were as valuable as men… It demanded that even a society’s enemies by regarded as human. Finally, it separated church from state, so that all-too-human emperors could no longer claim the veneration due to gods. All of this was asking the impossible: but it happened.” Life is good… until it isn’t. Then it becomes easy to blame others. It becomes easy to blame God, to blame society, to blame traditional values, to blame your neighbor, or even your parents. Peterson sums it up in this way. “This is life. We build structures to live in. We build families, and states, and countries. We abstract the principles upon which those structures are founded and formulate systems of belief. At first, we inhabit those structures and beliefs… But success makes us complacent. We forget to pay attention. We take what we have for granted. We turn a blind eye. We fail to notice that things are changing, or that corruption is taking root. And everything falls apart. Is that the fault of reality—of God? Or do things fall apart because we have not paid sufficient attention?... Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you. Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?... Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world….” (Top 6% of network agents nationwide) |